October 20, 2011: Gaddafi killed in Sirte, fifteen years later Libya remains divided in two

On October 20, 2011, 69-year-old Muammar Gaddafi was captured and killed in Sirte by fighters from Misrata, after a NATO drone strike pulverized his convoy. Forty-two years of personal rule ended in a ditch.

The circumstances of his death have never been established. According to Human Rights Watch, a grenade fragment from a device thrown by his own guards had already wounded him in the temple; beaten and stabbed by his captors, he died without it being possible to determine the exact cause, the NGO judged. More than 105 bodies lay near the convoy; at least 53 prisoners, perhaps 66, were found dead the next day at the Mahari Hotel. A war crime that was never tried.

Forty-two years of power, a double-edged Pan-Africanism

Having risen to the top on September 1, 1969, by overthrowing King Idris, Gaddafi held Libya with an iron fist, recalls Dakaractu. Elected head of the African Union in early 2009, he asked his peers to call him "King of Kings of Traditional Africa," before stepping down from the presidency a year later. The other part of his legacy remains: before his death, the International Criminal Court had issued an arrest warrant against him for crimes against humanity.

The African Union sidelined from an African issue

As early as March 10, 2011, the AU Peace and Security Council had adopted its roadmap: cessation of hostilities, humanitarian access, protection of African migrant workers, and a transition through inclusive dialogue, without foreign military intervention. Its committee of five heads of state—Mauritania, Congo, Mali, South Africa, and Uganda—was not granted permission to fly over Libya on March 20 and did not reach Tripoli and Benghazi until April 10 and 11.

On April 26, 2011, the AU warned that "any action going beyond the limits of this resolution"—Resolution 1973, adopted on March 17—would weaken international legality. It was not listened to.

Fifteen years later, Libya remains divided in two. According to Sidwaya, as reported by AllAfrica in January 2026, Tripoli is under the Government of National Unity of Abdel Hamid Dbeibah, recognized by the UN, and Benghazi is under the Government of National Stability of Osama Hammad, backed by Khalifa Haftar's army. The elections scheduled for December 24, 2021, never took place.

The narrative of a Sahel overwhelmed by Libyan arsenals deserves to be nuanced: Conflict Armament Research concluded in 2016 that these flows "are not exclusively, or even primarily" diverted from Libyan sources, while documenting SA-7b missiles from the same batch found in both Libya and northern Mali.

Key takeaways

The death of Gaddafi on October 20, 2011, brought an end to forty-two years of absolute power, but neither justice nor sovereignty followed: the executions in Sirte remain unpunished and Libya still has two governments.